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View Full Version : Falloff for lights in Maya - how to customize like Max?

Alloy
02-12-2003, 06:16 PM
Max has really intuitive customizable falloff for its lights. Just define beginning and ending ranges and bounding spheres or discs appear to mark the falloff zones.

Maya has the three basic, real world, falloff methods - linear, quadratic, and cubic. After scouring the manual, there is a way to create custom brightness falloffs, using a IntensityCurve. However, that 'curve' is a spreadsheet that is less than intuitive.

Is there a better, more intuitive way to create custom falloff on Maya's lights?
playmesumch00ns
02-12-2003, 06:21 PM
I think decay regions has similar functionality to the max version? You can get at it from the light manipulator.

Otherwise you can use a distanceBetween node or two locators to drive the light's intensity curve keys
Alloy
02-12-2003, 07:32 PM
I played around with decay regions. Basically it turns the spot light into alternating bands of light and shadow. Think zebra.

I've actually been pondering about what this functionality could be used for, to make it common enough to include in the base options.
playmesumch00ns
02-13-2003, 12:29 AM
Ahhh, I always wondered what they were for. Well I have absolutely no idea why you'd need that, but I spose someone must have once upon a time.

Seriously tho, do the thing with the distance between node, then you can control the falloff curve very nicely in the graph editor
Norb
02-13-2003, 06:23 AM
if you goto http://www.highend3d.com there is a script called decayLight or something like that that physically attaches a sphere to the decay region, so you just gotta scale the sphere to adjust the decay...






Norb
stunndman
02-13-2003, 10:46 PM
read the manual - chapter Rendering -> Customizing intensity or color decay
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